A few days earlier:
"Thank you kind sir" said the old lady to the hero who had rescued her from a mad dog "How may I repay you?" She looked into the hero's sad, weary eyes.
"No need, ma'am" he answered.
"Oh, but I think there is a need" she answered. "Talk to me"
The hero felt the tight rein he had held over his emotions since his youth and the beginning of his warrior training loosen. "I'm just sick of it" he answered "Sick of killing, sick of endless quests, sick of self-denial. Sick of the responsibility. I hate being a hero!" he exploded, with a look of shock on his face as for the first time in his life he was expressing his true feelings.
"Why, what do you hate about it?"
"I hate the long marches! I hate never being comfortable! I hate short rations!"
"That's not what this is really about, is it, though?"
"Ma'am, I am so sick of killing. Nine-tenths of my job is making things that are alive dead." He gestured at the mad dog he had decapitated. "Ma'am, this is going to sound weird, and I don't know why I'm telling you, a complete stranger, when I've never told anyone this before in my life, but sometimes I envy women. They can make new life and nurture it, when it seems like all men can do, leastwise all I can do, is kill."
"So you want a life which is comfortable, where you can eat as much as you want, where you don't have to kill anything, and where you can nurture life rather than taking it?"
"Ma'am, that sounds like paradise."
She placed her hand on his forehead. "I'm placing a geas on you. You're going to challenge the elven queen. Hush, trust me, this is for your good."
+++++++++++++
As the servant left the elven queen's throne room leading a panicky sow by a rope, she dropped the false appearance of a servant and revealed herself as the old lady. The sow calmed down immediately.
"There, there" said the goddess. "You're not going to any nasty old pig farm to be turned into sausage. I have a special sty for you. Clean straw, delicious food, and in a few days we'll introduce you to a fine, gentlemanly boar that used to be a very unhappy baroness. You're going to make life, not take it."
The sow squealed happily.